By Ivan Toth
At the beginning of 1942, America was preparing for its first attack against the Nazi military forces. During this time, Prescott Bush was one of the leading partners at Brown Brothers Harriman, while his 18-year-old son George, the future CIA director and President of the United States, was just beginning his training as a Navy pilot. On October 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi-German assets and the cessation of financial transactions in New York City that were being conducted under Bush’s oversight.
Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the government took control of the Union Banking Corporation, where Prescott Bush was a director. The Office of Alien Property Custodian seized all shares in the Union Banking Corporation owned by Prescott Bush, E. Roland “Bunny” Harriman, three Nazi directors, and two of Bush’s associates.
North Africa in Flames, Wall Street Under Investigation
By October 26, 1942, American troops were on their way to North Africa. Two days later, the U.S. government issued directives to seize the assets of two Nazi front corporations operated by the Bush and Harriman-owned bank: the Dutch-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. While American forces landed near Algiers on November 8, 1942, and fought heavy battles throughout November, Nazi assets in the Silesian-American Corporation, long managed by Prescott Bush and his father-in-law George Herbert Walker, were blocked and seized by the U.S. government on November 17, 1942, under the Trading with the Enemy Act.
Nazi Steel and American Capital: The Mystery of CSSC
Documents from the National Archives reveal that BBH’s involvement with the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) was deeper than simply holding shares for others during the 1930s. Bush’s friend and “Skull & Bones” colleague Knight Wooley, another partner at BBH, wrote to Averell Harriman in January 1933, warning of issues with CSSC after the Poles began nationalizing the steel mills. “The situation with the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) has become extremely complicated, and I have passed all information to the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to ensure our interests are protected.” After reviewing the matter, Foster Dulles, a partner at that law firm and brother of Allen Dulles, the future CIA director, insisted that their man in Berlin gather more information to understand the true state of affairs. Dulles was particularly nervous and anxious about whether any trail could lead back to linking American directors with the Nazis.
The ownership of the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) between 1939, when the Germans invaded Poland, and 1942, when the U.S. government seized UBC and SAC, is not fully clear. SAC owned coal mines in the Silesian mountains on the German-Polish border, using prisoners from concentration camps, including Auschwitz, as labor. SAC was certainly the owner of CSSC between 1934 and 1935; however, when SAC was seized and blocked, there was no trace of CSSC. All clear evidence of ownership disappeared after 1935, leaving only a few traces in 1938 and 1939, notes Eva Schweitzer, journalist and author of the book America and the Holocaust.
American Corporations in Service of Hitler
Upper Silesia soon became part of the Reich after the invasion of Poland. While Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those owned by then-neutral Americans (and some other foreign nationals) received special attention, as Hitler was still trying to persuade the U.S. to remain neutral and stay out of the war. Although ownership changed several times during the 1930s, it remains unclear whether he and UBC were directly involved with the company when Thyssen’s assets were seized in the U.S. in 1942.
It was unusual when the U.S. government announced it was “only seizing Nazi assets, leaving the American partners of the Nazis free to continue their business.” Unfortunately, these and other wartime measures by the U.S. government were not enough to prevent tragedy; the Bush family had already played its role in funding and arming Adolf Hitler for his takeover of Germany, and later in financing the Nazi war machine in its conquest of Europe and war against the United States.
American economist Victor Thorn noted that although many other corporations helped the Nazis—such as Standard Oil, Rockefeller’s Chase Bank, and American automobile manufacturers (it is little known that during Allied bombing of Germany, orders were given to spare Ford’s factories there)—Prescott Bush’s assistance and interests were key to the Nazis’ rise. Thorn adds that UBC became a secret channel to protect Nazi capital leaving Germany and flowing to the U.S. via the Netherlands. When the Nazis needed funds back, Brown Brothers Harriman sent money directly to Germany. In this way, UBC sent funds from the Netherlands, and Brown Brothers Harriman sent them back into Germany—a perfect money-laundering operation headed by Prescott Bush.
UBC: A Bank That Survived the War
Homer Jones, then head of the Office of Alien Property Custodian, advised that the assets should be seized for the government’s benefit. Instead, UBC was left untouched and was eventually returned to American shareholders after the war. Some claim Bush sold his shares in UBC after the war for $1.5 million, but no written record or document has been found to support this claim. Nothing was done, nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact that UBC was caught “red-handed,” used as an American front for the Thyssen family for eight months after the U.S. officially entered the war, and was a bank that had partly financed Hitler’s rise.
Connections to Auschwitz
The most intriguing detail remains a mystery: whether there was a connection between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, CSSC, and Auschwitz. Thyssen’s partner in United Steel Works, which owned coal mines and steel mills across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel magnate who partly owned IG Farben, the powerful German chemical company that supplied concentration camps with Zyklon B, the gas used to kill prisoners. Flick’s steelworks were among the biggest users of forced labor from concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article from March 18, 1934, “Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while the remaining shares were held by Americans.”
How the Bush Family Profited from Hitler’s Rise to Power
Authors Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, in their book George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, claim that the financial crash of 1929–1931 severely impacted Germany, the U.S., and the UK, weakening their governments. During this period, Prescott Bush began gradually building his wealth and power. At the same time, some members of the Anglo-American establishment of wealthy families supported Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. Furthermore, the authors categorically claim that the Bush family’s wealth increased as a direct result of their unconditional support for Adolf Hitler’s political project.
UBC, under Prescott Bush and in long-term cooperation with Fritz Thyssen and his German Steel Trust, participated in the formation, preparation, and financing of the Nazi war machine through factories producing armored vehicles, fighter planes, weapons, and explosives.
Conclusion
The Bush family’s habit of aiding terrorists and fascist regimes to increase their wealth is nothing new. Their methods have not changed much since the 1930s, only becoming slightly more sophisticated. Prescott Bush collaborated, both directly and indirectly, with the Nazis, while George Herbert Walker Bush and his son George Walker Bush collaborated with the Taliban and the Saudis, specifically the bin Laden family—the same Osama bin Laden who, according to official versions, was “responsible for the destruction of the WTC and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.”
Just like their grandfather, who seized the opportunity to increase his wealth and power by cooperating with the Nazis 60 years ago, both G.H.W. Bush and G.W. Bush, who cooperated with the bin Ladens, prove the saying that for some, war is a profitable business—regardless of countless human casualties, suffering, and destruction.
